This curriculum is developed around the idea that there are Three Basic Goals of Life and Education. Bearing these goals in mind shapes education to fulfill its deepest purpose: to produce well-rounded, capable, and benevolent people who are a boon to society and to themselves. Educating children to be better and happier human beings is the essential goal of education, even as they learn the technical expertise needed to serve our world to the best of their abilities. Discovering the Real Me seeks to correct the imbalance in current education by devoting special attention to the development of the inner human being—the core of which is heart and conscience.
Virtues in and of themselves are not always enough. Virtues are not always used in the service of good. There have been dictators who had strong wills and great self-discipline; there have been terrorists who worked with diligence long into the night to perfect their techniques; there have been computer hackers who put in long hours of study and practice to hack into the most well-guarded sites; there have been thieves who were very generous with their stolen treasures. Virtues developed within a framework of purpose, such as the Three Basic Life Goals, serve to craft a life of goodness.
The First Life Goal: Forming a Mature Character
Young children and teenagers have a will to maturity. This is evidenced by a youngster’s declaring, “I’m not six. I’m six-and-a-half!” Teenagers strive to be grown-up, sometimes through the use of make-up, by yearning to learn to drive and be independent, by being assertive, and sometimes by working on their physiques to achieve a cultural ideal of attractiveness. Later in life too, there continues to be a will toward greater maturity and greater fulfillment of the personality.
The Second Life Goal: Attaining Loving Relationships and Family
People feel incomplete without loving relationships with family and friends. These relationships contribute a great deal to making us into the people we are. Without them, we feel detached, lonely, unfulfilled, and depressed. Warm and loving relationships with others—relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and other associates—are one of the most rewarding parts of life. When relationships are stressed, empty, or not there, people suffer a great deal.
The Third Life Goal: Making a Positive Contribution
Erikson characterized a mature stage of life as wanting to be generative and creative rather than lapsing into stagnation. People have a need in life to use their creativity to make a positive contribution to society and the world. This is usually done through the work or career that they choose, but it may also be expressed through hobbies, volunteer work, contributing to causes they believe in and in other ways through which they generate beauty and productivity. People are unfulfilled in life if they feel that their lives have been in vain, their efforts have come to naught.
Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that the purposes of life are “to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.”[[#_ftn1|[1]]] The resemblance to the three basic life goals is obvious. To live and learn have to do with attaining maturity; to love has to do with warm and loving relationships; and leaving a legacy has to do with making a positive contribution to the world.
Other educators have seen life’s purposes revolving similarly around these three basic life goals. Educator Richard Livingstone said that fulfillment in life came from attaining three achievements: 1) to achieve personal maturity and integrity 2) to find happiness in love through having a family and friends and 3) to be successful in one’s chosen career and so contribute to society. [[#_ftn2|[2]]]
Researchers Conner and Chamberlain did a study of what gives meaning and purpose to life for people in middle age. Once again, surveys showed that people’s derivation of meaning in life tended to settle around three basic pursuits: 1) personal development 2) relationships with people and 3) creativity and relating with the natural world.[[#_ftn3|[3]]]
Meaningful character education, then, does well to focus upon cultivating virtues within a framework of purpose, so as to aid people in crafting lives that are satisfying as well as morally good. The pursuit and fulfillment of these three life goals point the way to valuable and productive lives. By designing our educational system with these three goals in mind, we can help young people to find true satisfaction and fulfillment in life while realizing their full potential as human beings.
Involving Families
Meaningful character education necessarily involves family, for families are the first schools of love and character. Any character education program benefits by including parents in reinforcing the character education lessons taught in schools. In fact, character education programs that have the most effect are combinations of the efforts of homes, schools, and communities reinforcing one another to surround children with a “net” of positive reinforcement for virtuous behavior.
Such a “net” reassures children that good and virtuous behavior is meaningful and important to living together in community, from the family to the society to the nation and to the world. Through relationships in the family, children are trained to focus upon others rather than the self. The UPF character education initiative recognizes the works of moral development theorists who see the family as providing the inner working models for all relationships outside as well as inside the family.
A child’s desire to please his or her parents translates into a desire to please teachers, mentors, and other legitimate authority figures. A child’s love for siblings expands to the ability to make friends and get along with peers. Later in life, learning to love a spouse introduces a person into understanding the opposite sex. Becoming a parent expands human consciousness into its greatest realm of caring for the wants and needs of another, over and above one’s own.
The UPF character education initiative accepts that people learn caring thoughts, feelings, and behavior through four realms of heart in the family:
The family is the school of the type of love that focuses upon others—altruistic love. The research of the Oliners on what motivated the radical altruism of “rescuers” during the Holocaust—people who sacrificed their own self-interests in order to help the persecuted Jews—found one common factor among rescuers interviewed.
They were raised by loving parents who taught them to care about others.
The UPF character education initiative thus honors the family as the primary and premier source of character education and considers the family’s main lesson—altruistic love—to be the virtue of virtues. Altruistic love is the virtue that encompasses, includes, or directs all the other virtues.
Key Points
Instruction in virtues is best focused on working toward worthy goals.
A united front of home, school, and community provides a good moral net for young people.
The family is crucial to the moral development of the young.
The family teaches altruistic, unselfish love through four realms of heart.
Altruistic love is the virtue of virtues.
Training Exercise A: My Family, the Character Educators
Divide into small groups of three or four people. Share with one another one moral lesson your family explicitly taught you (for example, The Golden Rule or some other such saying or precept). Then share with one another one moral lesson you learned from your family without explicit teaching. An example might be learning honesty because you saw your mother walk back into the store and return the extra change the clerk had accidentally given her.
Training Exercise B: Name that Villain!
In the same small groups, come up with a list of three or four people whom you consider to be bad examples of character. Preferably, they should be famous people everyone knows something about.
Next, list virtues of character they do have. An actress serving jail time for drunk driving might still be known to help out at an animal shelter. A corrupt political figure might still be loyal to his friends.
Discuss whether striving for the Three Basic Life Goals would help these people direct the virtues they do have into worthier lives and to overcome the vices they have. [[#_ftnref|[1]]] Steven Covey, First Things First (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 45. [[#_ftnref|[2]]] Richard Livingstone, Education for a World Adrift (Cambridge, 1943).
[[#_ftnref|[3]]] Kay O’Connor and Kerry Chamberlain, “Dimensions of Life Meaning: A Qualitative Investigation at Mid-Life,” British Journal of Psychology 87/3 (August 1996) pp. 461-77.
Table of Contents
This curriculum is developed around the idea that there are Three Basic Goals of Life and Education. Bearing these goals in mind shapes education to fulfill its deepest purpose: to produce well-rounded, capable, and benevolent people who are a boon to society and to themselves. Educating children to be better and happier human beings is the essential goal of education, even as they learn the technical expertise needed to serve our world to the best of their abilities. Discovering the Real Me seeks to correct the imbalance in current education by devoting special attention to the development of the inner human being—the core of which is heart and conscience.
Virtues in and of themselves are not always enough. Virtues are not always used in the service of good. There have been dictators who had strong wills and great self-discipline; there have been terrorists who worked with diligence long into the night to perfect their techniques; there have been computer hackers who put in long hours of study and practice to hack into the most well-guarded sites; there have been thieves who were very generous with their stolen treasures. Virtues developed within a framework of purpose, such as the Three Basic Life Goals, serve to craft a life of goodness.
The First Life Goal: Forming a Mature Character
Young children and teenagers have a will to maturity. This is evidenced by a youngster’s declaring, “I’m not six. I’m six-and-a-half!” Teenagers strive to be grown-up, sometimes through the use of make-up, by yearning to learn to drive and be independent, by being assertive, and sometimes by working on their physiques to achieve a cultural ideal of attractiveness. Later in life too, there continues to be a will toward greater maturity and greater fulfillment of the personality.The Second Life Goal: Attaining Loving Relationships and Family
People feel incomplete without loving relationships with family and friends. These relationships contribute a great deal to making us into the people we are. Without them, we feel detached, lonely, unfulfilled, and depressed. Warm and loving relationships with others—relatives, friends, co-workers, neighbors, and other associates—are one of the most rewarding parts of life. When relationships are stressed, empty, or not there, people suffer a great deal.The Third Life Goal: Making a Positive Contribution
Erikson characterized a mature stage of life as wanting to be generative and creative rather than lapsing into stagnation. People have a need in life to use their creativity to make a positive contribution to society and the world. This is usually done through the work or career that they choose, but it may also be expressed through hobbies, volunteer work, contributing to causes they believe in and in other ways through which they generate beauty and productivity. People are unfulfilled in life if they feel that their lives have been in vain, their efforts have come to naught.Steven Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that the purposes of life are “to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.”[[#_ftn1|[1]]] The resemblance to the three basic life goals is obvious. To live and learn have to do with attaining maturity; to love has to do with warm and loving relationships; and leaving a legacy has to do with making a positive contribution to the world.
Other educators have seen life’s purposes revolving similarly around these three basic life goals. Educator Richard Livingstone said that fulfillment in life came from attaining three achievements: 1) to achieve personal maturity and integrity 2) to find happiness in love through having a family and friends and 3) to be successful in one’s chosen career and so contribute to society. [[#_ftn2|[2]]]
Researchers Conner and Chamberlain did a study of what gives meaning and purpose to life for people in middle age. Once again, surveys showed that people’s derivation of meaning in life tended to settle around three basic pursuits: 1) personal development 2) relationships with people and 3) creativity and relating with the natural world.[[#_ftn3|[3]]]
Meaningful character education, then, does well to focus upon cultivating virtues within a framework of purpose, so as to aid people in crafting lives that are satisfying as well as morally good. The pursuit and fulfillment of these three life goals point the way to valuable and productive lives. By designing our educational system with these three goals in mind, we can help young people to find true satisfaction and fulfillment in life while realizing their full potential as human beings.
Involving Families
Meaningful character education necessarily involves family, for families are the first schools of love and character. Any character education program benefits by including parents in reinforcing the character education lessons taught in schools. In fact, character education programs that have the most effect are combinations of the efforts of homes, schools, and communities reinforcing one another to surround children with a “net” of positive reinforcement for virtuous behavior.Such a “net” reassures children that good and virtuous behavior is meaningful and important to living together in community, from the family to the society to the nation and to the world. Through relationships in the family, children are trained to focus upon others rather than the self. The UPF character education initiative recognizes the works of moral development theorists who see the family as providing the inner working models for all relationships outside as well as inside the family.
A child’s desire to please his or her parents translates into a desire to please teachers, mentors, and other legitimate authority figures. A child’s love for siblings expands to the ability to make friends and get along with peers. Later in life, learning to love a spouse introduces a person into understanding the opposite sex. Becoming a parent expands human consciousness into its greatest realm of caring for the wants and needs of another, over and above one’s own.
The UPF character education initiative accepts that people learn caring thoughts, feelings, and behavior through four realms of heart in the family:
The family is the school of the type of love that focuses upon others—altruistic love. The research of the Oliners on what motivated the radical altruism of “rescuers” during the Holocaust—people who sacrificed their own self-interests in order to help the persecuted Jews—found one common factor among rescuers interviewed.
They were raised by loving parents who taught them to care about others.
The UPF character education initiative thus honors the family as the primary and premier source of character education and considers the family’s main lesson—altruistic love—to be the virtue of virtues. Altruistic love is the virtue that encompasses, includes, or directs all the other virtues.
Key Points
Training Exercise A: My Family, the Character Educators
Divide into small groups of three or four people. Share with one another one moral lesson your family explicitly taught you (for example, The Golden Rule or some other such saying or precept). Then share with one another one moral lesson you learned from your family without explicit teaching. An example might be learning honesty because you saw your mother walk back into the store and return the extra change the clerk had accidentally given her.Training Exercise B: Name that Villain!
In the same small groups, come up with a list of three or four people whom you consider to be bad examples of character. Preferably, they should be famous people everyone knows something about.Next, list virtues of character they do have. An actress serving jail time for drunk driving might still be known to help out at an animal shelter. A corrupt political figure might still be loyal to his friends.
Discuss whether striving for the Three Basic Life Goals would help these people direct the virtues they do have into worthier lives and to overcome the vices they have.
[[#_ftnref|[1]]] Steven Covey, First Things First (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 45.
[[#_ftnref|[2]]] Richard Livingstone, Education for a World Adrift (Cambridge, 1943).
[[#_ftnref|[3]]] Kay O’Connor and Kerry Chamberlain, “Dimensions of Life Meaning: A Qualitative Investigation at Mid-Life,” British Journal of Psychology 87/3 (August 1996) pp. 461-77.